


The Garden

by sonofnjobu



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Angst, Black Panther - Freeform, F/M, Jabari Tribe - Freeform, Sex Work, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2020-11-10 18:02:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20855963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonofnjobu/pseuds/sonofnjobu
Summary: After the death of his mother, M’Baku finds himself in need of someone to talk to who doesn’t know who he is. Slated to ascend the Jabari throne, that sort of person would be hard for him to come by. He soon hears of a place where people can go to be seen but still unknown. The base of the mountain. The Garden.





	1. The Mourning

“I’ll see you soon.”

Tundé’s warm lips caught yours in a soulful kiss. His broad arms snaked around your back and pulled you closer to him as if he wanted to completely consume you. You pressed the palms of your hands against his shoulders and jumped up, wrapping your legs around his waist and kissing him back. 

“Just stay a little longer,” you whispered, speeding up the rate of your kisses. Tundé groaned as you moved from his lips to the side of his neck. He loved that spot. Your kisses got sloppier until you were practically dragging your tongue against his jet black flesh. 

You calculated that a nibble at the earlobe and a slight swivel of your hips against his growing erection would have him. You were pressing all of the right buttons. He’d be yours yet.

“I can’t,” Tundé grunted as you applied the pressure to his groin. “I have to get back up the mountain.”

He loosened his grip on you and you slid down his hard body like a fireman’s pole, leaving a noticeably wet spot on the fabric that had separated your genitals. Tundé adjusted his pants and reached for his fur coat.

Damn. You’d been so close.

“I’d stay if I could, my love, but I’m running low on money. The Mourning has lasted three weeks now with no end in sight. I’ll be back as soon as it’s over.”

You pushed your bottom lip out in a pout, but you weren’t going to force the issue. If he didn’t have money left, you weren’t about to give out charity pussy. Everyone was struggling.

“Hopefully, I’ll be back next week,” Tundé comforted you as he stepped out the door. You leaned against the doorframe, completely nude and visible to the village. 

“I’ll be waiting,” you purred.

Tundé drank in one last long look at you before throwing his fur over his shoulder and beginning his ascent back up the mountain. You watched him leave, frozen in your sensual pose in case he happened to turn back.

Once he was out of sight, you leaned out the door and locked eyes with your friend Femi. She worked two doors down in a brothel type establishment, and had been assigned an outdoor post in an attempt to lure in any straggling customers.

“Anyone?” you shouted at her, shrugging your shoulders.

“Not a soul. It’s dead!” Femi shouted back.

“Fuck,” you murmured and headed back in to your house to put some clothes on.

Tundé was your most loyal customer. He’d made his way down the mountain multiple times during The Mourning, but no one else had. They had no money.

As is tradition in Jabari culture, the death of a monarch is observed through a mourning period where citizens halt regular life to take part in funerary events for a few weeks. The length of the mourning period depends on how beloved the deceased was. 

The Queen had died three weeks ago now, so she must have been highly revered. You wouldn’t know, you’d never met her. It was rare that a member of the royal family would come to the base of the mountain. 

Jabari society was a literal hierarchy. The wealthier and more important you were, the higher up the mountain you lived. You lived at the base alongside perimeter guards, farmers and fishermen. You relied on patrons to come down the mountain in search of your sexual services. But during The Mourning, they weren’t making any money. 

Subsequently, neither were you. 

How typical for a woman who lived thousands of feet above you to have such an affect on your life. Even in death, the royals had their fingers in your pockets. 

Tundé had left his payment on your dresser. He paid you handsomely, even when money was tight for him. But his fees alone wouldn’t get you to the end of next week. You had to draw in customers fast.

An idea forming in your head, you dropped to your bottom drawer and dug around. Many patrons would leave you tokens of affection and you were on the hunt for a specific gift from a River Tribe boy named Hakim. Your fingers closed on the cold, metallic beads of a bracelet and you stood up.

With a quick glance at yourself in the mirror, you tousled your hair to the side and put on a sultry face. You pressed the one button Hakim had taught you how to use and the bracelet began to chime. It rang merely twice before the image of a cocky young man with a tapered fade sprung from your wrist.

“Praise be to Bast!” Hakim gasped. “The most beautiful woman in the world is calling me?”

A raucous chorus of other men’s voices sounded around him and his image shook a bit as he pushed his friends away.

“Hey hey hey hey! Privacy please!”

You batted your eyelashes and tilted your chin. You lowered your wrist just enough to let him see you were naked without giving away the goods.

“OOHHHH!” the gang of guys shouted.

“I miss you,” you say, your tone slightly higher than your normal speaking voice. 

Hakim’s chest puffed and a small smirk pulled at the sides of his lips. 

“You just say the word and I’m there, gorgeous girl.”

You flipped your twists to the other side. 

“Take me out instead.”

“Oh yeah? Like a date?”

“Last time you mentioned… what was it called? The River Games?” You pulled your eyebrows together in mock confusion. You knew exactly what The River Games were. But Hakim needed to think it was his idea.

“Yeah, The River Games! That’s wild you would call. They start tonight actually.”

“Ask her if she’s got any friends,” a voice to the left of the hologram whispered. Hakim elbowed him but posed the question anyways. 

“My friend wants to know if you have any friends who want to tag along. It could be like a double date. But he’s just jealous that I’ll have the baddest woman at the party.”

“I can make it a quadruple date. I’ll meet you there.” You blew a kiss at his image and prepared to hang up. Hakim was too excited to notice that he didn’t tell you where to meet. You’d been to The Games before. As he struggled to hang up the call, you could hear his friends say things like, “Yo, is she Jabari? You got a Jabari girl?! Yooooooo!”

You dropped the bracelet back on to the bed and exhaled sharply. Men would never understand how much one has to engage their core to hold these sexy poses. You walked back outside, still buck naked and called out.

“Femi! Get the girls. We’re going on a field trip!”


	2. The Howling

M’Baku stared down the length of the wooden conference table. Elders sat in each chair, discussing his upcoming coronation and the burial of his mother for the last four hours. He felt numb, and the edges of his vision blurred as he focused in on a knot in the wood. Everything melted away except that dark spot, and soon, even it began to distort. He hadn’t heard his name being called until a light touch brought him back to the present.

“M’Baku?”

He looked down to see a worn hand with paper thin, wrinkled skin resting lightly atop his own. His grandmother smiled kindly at him, the lines around her earthy brown eyes deepening when she did so. 

“I think we have had enough for today, don’t you?” she said softly just to him. Her voice sounded like tinkling bells. Upon hearing it, M’Baku instinctively released tension in his shoulders he hadn’t known he’d been holding. 

Everyone else saw M’Baku simply as the next leader of the Jabari tribe. The fact that he was the youngest in Jabari history ever to do so was supposed to be a point of pride. But his grandmother saw it for what it truly meant; a young man who had lost both of his parents too soon. He was being crushed underneath the weight of mourning and the pressure to lead a nation.

“Come,” she said, giving his arm a light squeeze as she rose from the table. “Let us retire.” 

A council member began to protest, flipping agitatedly through papers and logistics that “must be dealt with presently.”

“We need to discuss so much still. We haven’t even touched on the list of suitors! The young king must pick a bride if he is to…”

M’Baku’s grandmother shot the man an icy look, unhappy with having to repeat herself.

“I said, we shall retire. Good evening.”

The councilman fell back, and M’Baku joined the matriarch in the hallway. The heavy wooden doors to the hall closed behind them, leaving the pair to walk in silence.

She said nothing more as she shuffled down the corridor. Age had shrunk her and she moved slowly these days. M’Baku stood, towering over her with his mass. For every three steps she took, he took one. But he was thankful for the opportunity to slow down. His mind had been racing for weeks

“Listen,” she whispered, stopping outside of his bedroom door. “How the wind howls.”

A particularly fierce storm had whipped its way to the mountain top. The windows shook in their frames as lean-tos of snow built up on the edges. The wind roared outside.

“It blows with such force, that it almost sounds like crying. It’s beautiful that something so powerful so willingly expresses its vulnerability.”

M’Baku glanced at her, suddenly feeling his throat tighten, as if she could see right through something he’d been hiding. It had been weeks since his mother’s death and he had yet to truly mourn. His determination to be a strong leader forced him to internalize his pain. He’d been cold and stoic as he soldiered on. He felt he must bear it to truly honor her.

His grandmother reached up to him and beckoned him to bend down. She framed his face with her weathered hands and pressed her forehead to his, something his mother also used to do. She closed her eyes and simply held him there, breathing deeply and letting her skin warm his.

M’Baku mustered three short breaths before a sob caught in his throat and tears burned in his eyes. He clenched his eyes shut, unsuccessfully attempting to stem the flow of tears bursting to the forefront. Weeks of unacknowledged mourning demanded an audience within him. His grandmother firmly held his forehead against hers, lending her energy to guide him through the first waves of pain. Loss was an emotion with which she was all too familiar.

When his breathing slowed and his shoulders no longer heaved, she wiped her thumbs across his cheeks. She stepped back and looked at him lovingly.

“Rest, my boy.”

M’Baku nodded quickly and bid his grandmother goodnight before closing his bedroom doors. It was late and he was exhausted. 

He stripped out of his traditional mourning clothes, a stark difference from his usual fur and leather battle gear, and climbed into bed. Directly in his line of sight, leaned carefully up against his bedside table, was his mother’s hand carved staff. Now his, it signified his ascension to the throne. It still felt foreign in his hands and he had not carried it around since it was delivered to him from his mother’s room. He’d been avoiding it, as if claiming it was making his mother’s absence finally real.

His father’s death hadn’t felt the same. He’d been much younger then, not even five.

He remembered it of course, and it hurt, but it hadn’t come with the expectations that losing your last parent did. It didn’t result in the fate of the Jabari landing on his shoulders. And while he had trained all of his life in battle tactics and diplomacy, there was no education that prepared you for feeling so alone when all eyes were on you and every room was filled with people.

The wind roared outside of his window. 

M’Baku recalled his grandmother’s words about the simultaneous strength and vulnerability of the element. He suddenly felt grateful that the wind howled with such force tonight. No one would hear him cry.


End file.
